My Podcasting Equipment

If you’re interested in the equipment I use to create The Overwhelmed Brain podcast, here it is!

If you find this information useful, please comment below. I’d love to hear your feedback. Also, please note that I’ve provided links on where you can purchase these items below the article. These are affiliate links, meaning if you click on one, the merchant will thank me for your sale by sending me a few dollars.

Enjoy and comment!

The Overwhelmed Brain Podcast Equipment Setup

Before we begin, I’ll define some terminology:

1/4″ TS jack. 1 black line indicates a single, mono signal

TRS Jack. Two black lines indicate a two channel, stereo connection

This is a 3.5 mm mini plug. Can you guess if this is TS or TRS?

This is an RCA plug.

This is an XLR plug

This is a drain plug. It is not used in my setup. Courtesy of www.thegreenhead.com

I shall do my best to describe each component and how they are connected.

One of the main components of my system is the Heil PR-40 Microphone. I selected this for its excellent short-range pickup. It does a fantastic job of picking up only the noise closest to it, and the occasional loud siren outside. And by learning to project my voice, I was able to keep the input levels low enough to avoid as much background noise as possible.

As a separate purchase, I got the RE320POP Fine Mesh Metal Screen Pop Filter (That’s the round black-rimmed thing in the front). This thing minimizes the sound of fast moving air from your mouth hitting the mic. For example, the sound of the letter P is usually accompanied with a breath.

Like so many other podcasters, I love this mic.

A short-range, high-quality dynamic microphone. It’s what’s called a Front Firing Microphone, so you need to speak only into the end. It’s designed to pick up very close sounds. Requires XLR cable.

My PR-40 is mounted in what’s called a shock mount. The idea of a shock mount is to minimize vibration that typically comes from the mic stand or boom. In other words, if I accidentally hit my desk, the vibration that travels along the boom arm will be diminished when it hits the shock mount. The shock mount I use is the Heil PRSM-C. It is specifically designed to fit this microphone.

What holds the microphone in place, as if it were levitating in front of my mouth, is the carefully balanced boom. This comes with a clamp that opens to about 2″ to use on a desk or table. It also hides the cable pretty well in a channel built into the arm. The boom I use is the Heil PL2T Heavy Duty Mic Boom Arm with C-Clamp.

The Heil PL2T boom arm seems kind of pricey, but its engineering is spot on.Stays balanced, doesn’t droop, high quality. Typical of the Heil name.

The central hub where all the audio signals are sent to is my Mackie 1202-VLZ3 mixer. The mixer’s main job is to receive audio from any number of sources, and distribute it to any number of devices. Being able to control volume levels from the different sources, both incoming and outgoing is vital. There are ways to podcast without a mixer, but your sound quality may suffer.

The Mackie 1202-VLZ3 mixer is a 12 channel mixer – meaning it can handle 12 audio signals if needed.

The reason I chose this particular mixer is because it has Aux Send output sockets. That means I can send audio to different devices at different audio levels. In other words, if I wanted to lower the volume of my voice going to the laptop, I can just turn the AUX 1 dial down a bit. If I were playing music at the same time, the music would stay the same volume, but my voice would lower.

From my microphone, I have a 10′ female XLR cable to male XLR.

The PR-40 has a male XLR connection. You will need a female to male XLR cable to hook it up to a mixer

This XLR cable goes straight to the MIC 1 XLR socket of my mixer:

Female to male XLR cable from microphone

Not only do I want my voice coming into the mixer, but I also want my guest’s voice as well. During my initial setup, I did run a cable from the mixer directly to the headphone socket of my laptop. But I found that to be a terrible idea. The mixer is so sensitive, it picked up all the noises from the electronics inside the laptop and amplified them. The components of a laptop are all smushed together, so unwanted sound travels easily into the mixer. What I did was purchase a USB interface designed to clean up the sound and minimize the noise. Also, it has both XLR and TRS connections to use different types of cables with it.

I bought the Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 USB Audio Interface, which solves both the hardware connection limitations of a laptop (just a headphone and mic socket), and the unwanted noise and “dirtier” signal that a laptop sound card typically puts out.

The Focusrite Scarlett 2i2 is an excellent replacement for a crappy laptop soundcard.

I am using the Scarlett’s headphone port to connect into the stereo inputs, channel 5 – 6 on my mixer. This allows me to get a full left, right stereo signal. I don’t necessarily need a stereo signal for a podcast, but again, I’m going for a professional setup. These next two pictures show both the RCA cable I used, and the adapters necessary to make the connections.

The headphone jack of the Scarlett 2i2 is a 1/4″ stereo outputI use a 1/4″ stereo plug to 3.5 mm mini plug to complete the connection.The cable coming from the Scarlett’s headphone socket splits into a dual RCA jack, and plugs into LINE IN 5-6 on my mixer. Notice the RCA to 1/4″ mono plug.

Now that I have the signals in my mixer, I want to distribute them to three different sources. One of those sources is back to the laptop. The reason I am sending audio back to the laptop is because I want my guest to be able to hear me! Plus, if I were to plug in an MP3 player into the mixer, they would also be able to hear that as well. This is where I utilize the special Aux Send socket on my mixer Aux 1:

Aux Send: Send audio to an auxiliary device instead of to the “main” device, like a recorder. This is handy, because I can control the volume out levels separately between receiving devices.From Aux 1 on the mixer, to Input 1 of the Scarlett. Cool info to know: The two inputs on the Scarlett take both XLR and TRS in the same socket!

The second device I send the audio signals to is my Roland R-05 Wave / MP3 Recorder. This device is pretty awesome. In conjunction with a 4 GB SDHC card, you can record about 60 hours of audio. I don’t have a power supply for mine, but it’s supposed to last about 16 hours during recording, or 30 hours during playback on two AA batteries!

The Roland R-05 recorder is used in place of recording audio on the computer. I chose this because of the flexibility it gives me of being able to record audio from the computer, instead of using the computer to record audio coming from itself (if you know what I mean). Plus, I like the idea of being able to carry this to seminars with me for impromptu interviews.SDHC card slides into the top

I mount my R-05 to a small clamp called a Clampette by High Sierra:

What a wonderful device this is, called a Clampette.

I get the signal from my mixer to the recorder using the MAIN OUT sockets. Coming from the mixer is a dual TS 1/4″ plug to single 3.5 mm mini plug, plugged into the Line In on the recorder.

Main Out provides the stereo outputs I want to send to the digital recorderI’m about to plug the MAIN OUT from my mixer into the MIC socket of my recorder. However, I now use the Line In socket. I’ve read that MIC inputs should only used specifically for microphones due to impedance levels.

The next device I output to is my pair of MDR-7506 Sony Dynamic Stereo Headphones. These sound beautiful, fit comfortably (if not a tad tight), and bring out the highs and lows nicely. They come with their own 3.5mm to 1/4″ TRS adapter.

Excellent quality headphones – The Sony MDR-7506 Professional Monitor HeadphonesFrom the Sony headphones, into the included 1/4″ stereo to 3.5 mm stereo adapter, plugged into the headphone socket of the mixer

The last equipment I output sound to are my ultra cheap “studio” speakers. They don’t even deserve a picture, or an affiliate link, because they are so cheap and crappy. You can probably find better PC speakers at Goodwill. I will upgrade someday… but not today. I only use them for general listening purposes, not while editing audio. However, I will show you where I plug them in.

RCA male to RCA female to 1/4″ TS plugs shown. I have since updated this connection to a 3.5mm female mini plug to dual 1/4″ male TS Plugs.

The speakers come with the typical PC jack, a 3.5 mm mini plug. I have that cord plugged into a female 3.5 mm mini plug to dual 1/4″ TS Plugs

The last piece of equipment I purchased has nothing to do with audio, but everything to do with work flow:An LED light. I wanted a something that produced light, but not heat. I noticed I couldn’t see some of the details on my equipment, so I went to Home Depot and purchased this light bar:

All I can say is, I love this thing. It’s provides the perfect amount of light, and never heats up. The bar is great for the even distribution of light.

Well, there you have it! This concludes the tour of my podcasting equipment. I hope you’ve enjoyed it.

And now I’ll share the most important lessons I’ve learned in setting all this up:

The shorter you can get the audio cables, the less likely you will hear unwanted sound and interference

The higher quality the cable, the less unwanted sound and interference

The higher quality the equipment, the less unwanted sound and interference (do you see a theme here?)

The less adapters you use, the less degradation of the signal.

Using an external recorder allows you to keep your computer free for Skype, playing music, etc

Turn off the mixer when plugging things in, unless you want to blow your eardrums

You will never be able to get rid of all the background sound. Ever. (EDIT: Not true! I have gotten rid of the background hiss using the equipment you see here. Playing with the Gain and Level knobs of my microphone and other sound sources, I rarely have to use software to edit out a background hum or hiss)

Please let me know if you have any comments or questions, I’m happy to help! Oh, if you want the source for all things podcasting, John Lee Dumas is still taking memberships at Podcasters’ Paradise. Tons and tons of value, a huge support community, and loads of how-to videos. I’ll tell you up front, it ain’t cheap! But you’ll have everything you’ll ever need when it comes to podcasting. I’m a member, so I’ll see you on the inside! Here’s my affiliate link:

Other resources that I currently utilize:

Workflowy – A cool list-making tool for staying organized and on task! Add your ToDos, expand and collapse categories. All super easy to use, and even free!

WordPress – The defacto standard for creating a professional looking blog. It’s free, comes with a couple free themes (layout, colors, etc), and looks super clean. This is the .org site. If you want a very simple, no frills blog or website, head over to www.wordpress.com.

WordPress Lifestyle Pro Theme – For my WordPress website, I use the Studiopress Genesis framework, with the Lifestyle theme. If that doesn’t make any sense, go to WordPress.com and use their free service. Otherwise, dive into WordPress.org, then pay for a premium theme like this one. It makes life so much easier.

aweber – This is how I add subscribers to my email list, and send automated follow up emails. Phenomenal tool, super easy to use. They even give you the WordPress widget to stick in your site. I am in love with this tool!

libsyn – The absolute best podcast hosting service. This is the company you want if you are a podcaster. You will need a place to host your audio files, and these guys are solid. I love what they offer. There’s no reason to look any further for podcast hosting.

What listeners are saying…

“I purchased the MEAN workbook some months ago and it really helped clarify my situation. It is a very helpful resource and I read through it often to get back on track again”

This site assumes no responsibility for any errors or omissions. The Overwhelmed Brain specifically disclaims any liability resulting from the use or application of the information contained in the blog, podcast, services, books and products, and the information is not intended to serve as medical, psychological, legal, financial or other professional advice related to individual situations. Do not use information found on this site, podcast, services, books or products to replace professional medical or psychological services.